The Millionaire's Marriage Demand(16)

"So why aren't you dating that nurse you told me about? The one with the big blue eyes. Sounded like she'd be willing."

Travis had had a coffee with the nurse on his Wednesday shift; he could  have asked her out then. "Too tall, too blond, wrong shape, you want me  to go on?"

"You've got it bad, man."

"I'll get over it."

"You in love with this Julie?"

"No!"

"Not in the habit of falling in love myself, so I wouldn't know the  symptoms. But it's not like you to pine like a lovesick teenager over a  female who's given you nothing but grief. You know what you should do?"  Bryce didn't wait for Travis to answer. "Call her up. Or better still,  find out where she lives and knock on her door. See her again. Maybe  you'll find out you've imagined the whole thing. So she's got green  eyes. So what? Cats have got green eyes and you don't want to date a  cat."

"She's as graceful as a cat. And just as self-contained."

"She's got claws, too." Bryce's voice roughened. "No broad's going to  mess up your life, Travis, not if I have anything to say about it."

"You think if I saw her, I'd be over it?"

"Worth a try. Or maybe she'll have changed her mind and jump your bones."

"In my dreams."

"What have you got to lose? You're as cranky as a caged hyena."

"You got that part right." Travis grimaced. "Not that a second rejection'll make me feel any better."

"Don't be such a defeatist! Women drool all over you, I've watched 'em.  Go for it, Travis. I'll call you next week and see what happened."

A few minutes later Travis rang off. He wasn't going to go and see  Julie. If she didn't want him, that was her loss. On which militant  note, he went to bed.





CHAPTER NINE





On Sunday afternoon it poured with rain. This suited Julie's mood. Her  parents were coming for dinner and it would take her the rest of the  afternoon to get ready. Her mother was a fanatic housekeeper. But why,  thought Julie, as she wielded the dust cloth, did she think she had to  clean her apartment from top to bottom before her mother could walk in  the door? Was she still that much under Pearl Renshaw's thumb?

Julie loved her little apartment, which was owned by a wealthy and  eccentric widow at the clinic whose arthritic pain she'd been able to  relieve. She was paying through the nose for it, but it was only for a  couple more months and her savings account was decidedly healthy at the  moment.

She was living by the waterfront, on the top floor of an old brick  building near the marina. She'd filled her tiny balcony with flowering  plants, bought some attractive hand-painted furniture, and arranged some  of her collection of artifacts from her travels on the walls. It felt  like home.

Or it had, until she came back from Manatuck.

With a ferocious energy that had nothing to do with her mother, Julie  scoured the tub until it gleamed. She wasn't going to think about  Manatuck. Or Travis. Or the fact that her body, awakened by Travis, now  refused to go back to sleep.

She'd read about desire in books. Even though she'd felt twinges of it  now and then with one or the other of the men she'd dated, she'd  concluded privately that the authors had overactive imaginations. She'd  never been obsessed by a man, so that he haunted her sleep, her dreams  and her daylight hours.

Never, until this last week.

Scrubbing the bathroom floor as sexual sublimation, she thought with an  unhappy smile, and carried the bucket into the kitchen. Her knee still  hurt. Another reminder of a time she desperately wanted to forget.                       
       
           



       

Her bedroom was immaculate, the bathroom pristine, and it only took a  few minutes to tidy, dust and vacuum the living room and dining area.  Which left the kitchen.

The rain was hammering on the skylight and streaming down the windows;  she could scarcely see the harbor. A ginger ale. That's what she needed.  And then she'd tackle the kitchen. She'd made a cheesecake this  morning, so that much was done. As for the rest, she was planning a  rather complicated Moroccan chicken dish that she'd organize once she'd  finished cleaning.

At least work had gone well this week, that was one thing to be grateful  for. She was finding the clinic a welcome respite from her normal work;  she hadn't realized how stressful her overseas contracts had been until  she'd come home to Portland for the summer. Besides, some of her  clients were a delight. There was Abigail Masters, who'd found her this  apartment, who smoked cigars and swore like a stevedore; Leonora  Connolly, a retired dancer who was paying the physical price for her  career with humor and grace; and Malcolm McAdams, a famous hybridizer of  daylilies, who insisted on bringing his Manx cat to his sessions.

It was such a change from crushing heat, foreign tongues and equally crushing poverty …

Julie was just topping up the glass with pop when her buzzer sounded.  She frowned. The little boy downstairs had a tendency to open the  security door to whomever he pleased; she must speak to his parents  about it. Again. She went to the door, peering through the peephole.

Travis was standing in the hallway. The glass jerked in her hand,  spilling ginger ale on her shirt. She looked down at herself. Bare feet,  a luridly bruised gash on her leg, cutoff shorts and her very oldest  shirt which had a button missing in a rather strategic place.

Let him see her as she was. That should fix him.

She pulled the door open. His hair was plastered to his skull, his  raincoat was dripping on the mat, and his eyes were even more blue than  she remembered. He was carrying a rather bedraggled bouquet of  sweetpeas. She went on the attack. "How did you find out where I live?"

"Asked one of my colleagues at Silversides."

"How did you get in the front door?"

"A kid with bright red hair let me in. You should complain about that."

"I have. His parents think he's a little angel who couldn't possibly be breaking the rules."

"Are you going to ask me in?"

Her heart was bouncing around in her chest, her knees were weak and her  mouth dry. Too much adrenaline, she thought clinically. "Give me one  good reason why I should."

"Because you want to," Travis said.

She wanted to kiss him senseless, Julie thought faintly. If only she'd  taken yesterday's newspaper to the little coffee shop on the corner  instead of opting for ginger ale in her messy kitchen. "You're wet," she  said with blinding originality.

"It's raining. Or hadn't you noticed?"

So what was she going to say? You can come in if you promise to stay at  least six feet away from me at all times? "I'm cleaning," she said. "I'm  a mess."

Travis looked her up and down, taking his time about it, laughter  lurking in his eyes. As warm color crept up her cheeks, he said, "Are  you last on the list?"

"After the kitchen."

He eyed the glass in her hand. "I like ginger ale."

As all her nerves screamed danger, she gave him what she hoped was a  noncommittal smile. "You'd better come in. Here, give me your coat and  I'll hang it in the closet." Once she'd done so, he handed her the  flowers.

"These are for you. They were selling them at the market."

She frequently went to the market, which was only a few blocks from her  apartment. "Where do you live?" she said, suddenly suspicious.

He crossed the living room, rubbing at the pane. "You should be able to see my place from here. The second group of condos."

On a clear day she'd be in full sight of his windows, she thought  edgily. Just what she needed. "Do you really want pop? I could make you  some coffee. Or there's beer."

"A ginger ale would be fine."                       
       
           



       

She fled to the tiny galley kitchen, where unwashed dishes were heaped  on the counter. After rinsing the worst of the stain from her shirt, she  filled a second glass and went back into the living room. Travis was  standing on the sisal mat, looking around him with appreciation. He  dwarfed the room; he also looked very much at home.

"Those carvings, aren't they from Bali?" She nodded. "And the pillows look like they came from a Calcutta bazaar."

"They did."

"You've traveled a lot."

She said rapidly, "I do overseas contracts all the time. I just came  home this summer because my mother had a minor heart attack."

He picked up a delicately carved giraffe she'd bought in Tanzania.  "Where have you worked?" After she'd rattled off the names of some of  the countries, he added, "You didn't tell me any of this."

"I don't often talk about what I do. It makes people uncomfortable."